Index to all News postings

World Closure Announcement 3 August 2015

As of today the following worlds are no longer allowing character creation and will be closed to play at the beginning of 2016. Characters on all of these worlds will be saved and will be available to transfer to a remaining world for free, indefinitely.

We will begin the transfer process by opening the test world, Bullroarer, for character copy. We will then open transfers between the 10 remaining worlds. Then the worlds that are closing will be opened for transfer, a few at a time, in the order they are listed below. Please watch the website, forums, and launcher for announcements regarding timing. *Note: Brandywine will be unavailable for incoming transfers for a time until population and load can be re-evaluated on new hardware.*

World Transfers Data Center updates

14 March 2016

We are in the process of preparing to move LOTRO.com to our new data center. What this means for you is that sometime around 9:00 AM Eastern (-5 GMT) on Wednesday, March 16th we will temporarily close the forums to posting, so that we can copy the data over to the new data center, do some checks on it, and then reopen the forums to posting. It's possible the web site may be unavailable for a while as this work is being done.

When the web site is reopened, you should simply see the ability to post in the forums, and that's that. However, some Internet Service Providers may take some time for the new DNS information to propagate, so if you run into an issue, you can clear your browser cache, or, if you are technically savvy enough to want to do it, open up a command prompt on your computer and type ipconfig /flushdns. This would be something you could choose to do after we reopen the web site on Tuesday. Eventually, all ISPs will have updated their DNS information, so regardless of whether you take these steps, things should "just work".

This week we have a few things coming online we hope will improve some of the issues you have been experiencing since the Data Center move.

Tomorrow at 6am EST we will be switching over to a new ISP channel which should help get those of you on connections going through unnecessary hops, come through the quickest channels to our servers. We expect our EU players will see more of a change from this than others, but it may help others as well. There will be no downtime besides possibly a 10 min service hiccup around that time. We would love to hear how things feel for you after that.

Additionally this weekend we will be placing [B]Update 18 on Bullroarer[/B] for it's first Open Beta session. In this build we will have much of the content going out with U18 but it will also have the following items we hope will improve performance in various areas:

Awesonium upgrade to fix the store crashes some folks are seeing

Login Server fix to the "Server Full" error

New graphics setting options for reducing graphics and client load in PvMP areas

Reducing the data footprint of the Minas Tirith and Pelennor areas

More details and patch notes to come towards the end of the week.

We hope that you will have a chance to jump in and help test these things out with us and keep providing your feedback here and in /bug. We are reading all of it, even when we can not respond. Your feedback makes a difference!

Yes there will be a character wipe. QA will post in the appropriate Bullroarer thread when it is complete and it is safe to copy characters back over.

Originally posted by Vyvyanne:

The PvMP graphics setting add a couple more items to options you could turn off to reduce graphics quality anywhere, but the PvMP aspect gives one checkbox that can turn off several options all at once. One of the problems in PvMP is loading all of the graphical renderings of that many characters in one area. This reduces the amount of visual extras your client is trying to load, thus it should help on the individual (client side) basis.

Originally posted by Vyvyanne:

BR will be up for a few weeks, but it will probably get patches in that time and it will not always be open to players in that time. The fix that went in fixes a problem where the login server was not handing off load to the second server that was waiting to take the load, and this would get into an over-loaded and stuck state. We have also added code to make it crash gracefully if it gets into that state anyway.

9 March 2016

As stated before we upgraded may different systems when we did this move, so the performance issues you are reporting are coming from a number of different areas. There fore there will be several fixes involved here, not just one fix to rule them all.

The maintenance restarts are to prevent the login error that gave the "server full message" we believe we have a fix that is being tested internally now and will require a patch to fix on live. Until we are fully through testing on that and patch we will continue the restarts to keep the error from occurring.

Additionally we are working on some performance improvements that we hope will help with the loading and lag issues in the MT, Pelennor and PvMP areas. These are also in development and internal testing and we hope to have them out on Bullroarer along with U18 content for testing soon.

The ISP issues are something we have to work through with other companies, and due to that is not something I can give timelines on but we are in daily conversations with them as we pass along data for them to analyze and adjust accordingly.

This is not a matter of just a switch somewhere someone forgot to flip, this is a matter of adjusting code that is over 9 years old from the Operating system it was built on to a new one, hardware it was built for to newer hardware, and internet routes that had been set in place to new ones. There are many kinks to work out along the way. Some of the changes will occur in the background, such as the ISP corrections without us knowing, and the client side ones have to go though the full patch/ update process before they can go live and we are getting through that as quickly as we can. We just dont have anything to show you on that yet, but as soon as we do, we will let you know.

Retailers have been made aware of the IC closure, but they control their own inventory. All we can do is inform them those items are no longer valid, which we have done.

To those concerned that we are working on multiple things at once, the LOTRO team is a group of people all with specializations in different areas.

We have a team that works on the networking, server maintenance and datacenter. They are actively working with our vendors to improve the ISP routing and looking into any problems created by the set-up or capabilities of the hardware itself (which is fully configured for all 10 worlds as well as set-ups to keep each of the closing worlds running until April and character data from them available even after that.)

We have game side engineers who are looking into the issue with the login server that occasionally starts giving the "Server Full" message and preventing logins when the server is not actually full. Additionally they have stopped any work they may have been doing on Update 18 to troubleshoot the problems we are seeing with transitions between landblocks since switching over to the new OS and hardware in the new datacenter.

We have game engineers working with QA, designers and artists to work on reducing over all client memory footprints in our newer areas as well as ways to reduce memory usage in PvMP.

QA has already completed the testing required to come to new recommended game specs. This is a process that takes months and an outside hardware compatibility lab to run, we are just in the process of compiling those results and running them through the various teams here for approval and they will be posted once they have completed that process and translations.

And we still have designers and artists whose talents do not lean on the side of performance improvements that continue to work away at U18 content.

Getting the new datacenter to be even better than what we had before is still our goal and we still have folks working heavily on it, but everyone has to work within their own strengths and due to the number of things that changed with this move it will take multiple approaches to get us back to where we want to be.

[QUOTE=Wibz;7545938]Do these improvements include fixing the horrendous buff/debuff lag/client performance hit that happens in fellowships and raids? This performance hit can send the client from running 60fps (or 100+, etc) down to less than 10 fps on very powerful PCs. Also when this happens all the buffs/debuffs of the selected mobs start to flash, jump around and sometimes totally disappear.

The issue has been raised multiple times over the last 4 years and has been totally ignored by Turbine.[/QUOTE]

We are looking into all of it. If there is something that will tweak performance in a positive direction without destroying the integrity of the game, we are looking at it whether it is new since the move or from before. We have found that the move has exacerbated issues we had before but we infrequent or not as noticeable until we performed our upgrades. So we are looking into these things as well. I dont see us doing a complete overhaul on our game engine code as one player mentioned. The cost in time and resources as well as stability risk there would be very high, but there may be adjustments that can be made without that needing to be necessary.

/bug reports are always helpful as they increase the amount of data we have to work with. Please do be aware that a /bug will never get a response, it is just a way to send data for us for our QA team to parse and use to verify/ reproduce issues but it gives them valuable data from which to do this.

We also could still use traceroutes from players experiencing latency issues. We present these to our ISP partners to help them diagnose problems on that end. You can send those to tech support or post them here.

And yes feedback if you see improvements is helpful as well. It lets us know if we are on the right track. For example it would be good to know if you have seen any improvement since Wed. Last week vs this week since we restarted the servers. We are investigating if we have a degradation over time issue. We know the login server issue presents after it reaches a thresh hold of time so we are resetting those before the weekend to prevent weekend interruptions while we work on a longer term fix. We would like to see if the game servers have a similar issue. If they do then there should be an improvement in gameplay this weekend vs last weekend, but if you are also in the group of folks having ISP route issues, you might not notice.

More specific problems like the client-side problems in PvMP will take a patch. Those will go into beta on Bullroarer once we have enough changes to test out effectiveness. We will announce testing periods for those on those forums once they are ready.

23 February 2016

Now that we have been in the new datacenter in New Jersey on the new hardware for several weeks now, we have learned a lot about how our service works with domestic and international ISPs. Early efforts at tuning have been showing progress, leading to measurable improvement in latency for both US and EU players. Based on this early information we believe that players will be best served by us focusing on improvements to the new datacenter, rather than moving the EU servers to Amsterdam.

Going forward we’ll continue to work on with the technology team at our datacenter as well as key regional ISPs to improve the performance of LOTRO for all players worldwide. The next step of this process will have us on a new routing system in the next few weeks. This is expected to improve performance for players in much of the EU, and certain parts of North America as well.

For those players experiencing issues in PvMP we are adding in client side optimizations with Update 18 that we hope will lessen the strain on client and server alike when in battles with large groups. We are also looking into the cause of client crashes when traveling and changing instances. We will continue to optimize the configurations of our servers to improve service stability. These efforts will not be over night, but should improve the situation over time so that your play experience will be even better than it was prior to the move.

Once again we thank you for your patience and understanding while we work through this construction.

Hey folks, we just wanted to give a little bit more information on the things we are working on related to the performance issues many players are still seeing, as we still have a few things that are being actively worked on.

Routing: We are still working with individual ISP’s and our own provider to help improve how traffic to and from the datacenter is being routed. This is something that can take a little time but we are making progress with everyone involved to make sure things are as efficient as they can be.

Server Configuration: As we are working with a new setup and server operating system, there are things that can be very different from the previous versions. Like changing from for example, Windows 7 to Windows 10, there can be and are some things that behave differently even though they in theory should not. There are also things that weren’t in previous versions that can help us that were not there before. Our Ops team has been constantly monitoring and making changes to help improve performance and will continue to do so.

PvMP: We know that playing in the Ettenmoors has not been a good experience since the move and we are looking at both server and game side solutions to help improve the performance. Some of these things may be simple adjustments we can make and some other will more than likely be a bit more on the complicated side, as nothing to do with PvMP is done easily due to the nature of it works.

here are just a few of the things that are being worked on, along with a few other options the team has been exploring. Overall we just wanted to make it clear that we are by no means done working on making the performance of the game better. We will continue to work on making improvements to all aspects of game performance as we move forward. We thank you all and appreciate everyone’s continued patience as we continue to make these improvements.

26 January 2016

With our datacenter transition still creating issues for many of you, I wanted to provide you with the latest update regarding the server stability issues.

While we have accomplished quite a bit we have much work to do to provide you with the service you deserve. When we moved our hardware from Boston to New Jersey, we not only upgraded our hardware, but we also had to move from an outdated Operating System to a new one. We also moved to a more modern set up of physical plus virtualized machines vs. just physical machines like we had before.

As with all software, there are a number of connection points to configure just right in a move as complicated as this and now that we are in the new location on the new hardware and OS we have found some issues in our configurations. We are working around the clock to address these issues as you have seen from the various down times you have experienced over the last couple weeks. Additionally we are working on code side fixes to correct the disconnections you are seeing which has to do with the servers smoothly transitioning your characters from one server to another. This transition time was affected by the OS and hardware upgrades.

Please note that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have not yet caught up with our new route. If you are seeing an increased ping time since the move, please submit a bug in game with the name of the ISP you are using. Putting in a ticket directly with your internet company telling them of the issue may help as well. We already have a couple tickets in with the main ISPs we have already identified with inefficient routes to our new home.

We did do extensive testing on the new datacenter, there are many things that did not come to light until we had the full live configuration online. We will continue working on this until the service is completely back online.

Once again we all thank you for your understanding and patience while we work through this.

Athena “Vyvyanne” Peters

Executive Producer, The Lord of the Rings Online™

6 January 2016

We are finally at the point at which we are ready to announce the opening of the new Datacenter with all new hardware! It has been a long road as we purchased and set up new hardware with updated operating systems, transferred all the data from the old worlds to the new and had to correct systems that had trouble with the transition for 32bit to 64 bit processing. But all of that is past us now and we are pleased to announce that on January 11th, 2016 we will come down for a maintenance window at 5am EST and come back up around 3PM in our new home!

22 December

This morning we added 3 Character transfer tokens to every account and enabled the ability to use these to go between any of the ten remaining worlds. Transfers are 1 token per character so you can use these to move your main characters while you wait for a free window for your world or hold on to them for a later time in case you decide to try out a different world.

This also means that the Account/ shared storage transfer is now available between all worlds and is free (no token needed).

Currently the 3 tokens we have granted or any that you may have purchased prior are the only ones available. We will offer a way to purchase more in the new year.

We hope this helps those of you who may have made a mistake in your transfer choice or simply want a change of pace without waiting for free transfer windows.

Happy Holidays from all of us to you! LOTRO Team

11 December 2015

While we are still working through some kinks in upgrading from 32-bit to 64bit Operating Systems for our new hardware, we have come to the last of the list of opening closing worlds for transfer. On Dec 14th Snowbourn will be opened for transfer. All closing worlds will then be available for transfer.

We will also be offering Free transfers between remaining worlds following the below schedule.

Dec 7th- Jan 3rd: Arkenstone & Gwaihir

Jan 4th- 10th: Landroval & Belegaer

Jan 11th- 17th: Crickhollow & Sirannon

Jan 18th- Jan 24th: Gladden & Laurelin

Jan 25th- Feb 29th: Brandywine & Evernight

March 1st- 31st: Arkenstone & Gwaihir

April 1st - May 1st: Landroval & Belegaer

May 2nd- May 31st: Crickhollow & Sirannon

June 1st- 30th: Gladden & Laurelin

Please note that transfers off of closing worlds will remain free permanently regardless of schedule.All Closing worlds will no longer be available for play on April 4th 2016. Characters will remain available for transfer to an open world.

Once again we are grateful for your patience throughout this process that took longer than any of us expected, but we are very excited about this upgrade and the boosted activity on the top ten worlds and we hope you are as well!

The actual turning on of the Datacenter will occur after the holiday. We are starting the free moves now because with the closing worlds all able to transfer as of Monday, there is no reason not to begin the cycle for those who have been waiting on it. The longer time for Arkenstone and Gwaihir is due to the impending Holidays which affect our work schedules and response times, so it makes it more difficult to start a reliable weekly window until January

We are working through some issues with turning Paid (token use) transfers back on, including granting 3 free tokens to every account. I do not have n ETA at this time, but as soon as possible. We understand some of you just want to transfer one or two characters or shared storage without waiting on a window and we want to let you do that, but it is gated behind us working through this issue.

Mine too, but this is a major upgrade and monumental transfer of data from one place to another that affects all of our systems including our support system. The last thing we want to do is push it out hastily right before most of our staff is off spending time with their families. Thus we had to make the call to hold on to it until we are secure in the functionality and will have a full staff ready to handle any difficulties we encounter during the launch and the weeks following.

2 December 2015

More Closing worlds opening for transfer and New Free remaining world transfers

On Monday December 7th we will open transfers off of Vilya.

At this time we will also be closing free transfers off of Brandywine and Evernight and switching to Arkenstone and Gwaihir.

Tuesday Dec 8th we will be opening transfers off of Meneldor completing the US closing worlds.

We are holding off on opening Snowbourn for a week or two as we add hardware capacity to our larger EU worlds to handle the load. It is possible this world may not be opened for transfers until we are in the new data center.

Work is coming to a close on this project and we hope to have a launch date for you soon once we have worked though the final testing of the environment.

New Hardware Update

9 November 2015

Thank you once again for assisting us in this Stress Test of the new server hardware and environment. It was a lot of fun and a great success as well!

Thousands of you joined us this past Saturday bringing us closer to knowing the limits of our new hardware. During the test, we did find some things we need to work a bit more on to make the launch of our new datacenter the best it can be. This means that we are going to make some more adjustments and then schedule another load test in a couple of weeks. This means we will not be making our previously targeted pre-Thanksgiving launch in the new facility.

When is the new target? Until we complete the next test it is hard to say. When we have a more solid date we will let you know.

The good news is that in this time we have been able to add additional server power to the older hardware so that while we all await the great migration, we will be re-opening transfers, starting with the long awaited Brandywine! As of today all closing US worlds already open for transfers should now see Brandywine as a target destination. Additionally next week we will open Maiar for transfers on Monday 11/16 and Imladris on Tuesday 11/17. We will continue to monitor and open worlds for transfer as appropriate while we wait for the buildout to be completed.

Thank you again for your patience and understanding in this transition!

Originally posted by Vyvanne:

Closing dates for the Closing worlds will be extended to the end of Q1 2016 so that players have time to return and get mail from kinships and friends in game before making a decision on where to move.